Bicycle

Re "Bamboo bike quite the offshoot," June 18 Third World citizens building their own bicycles out of bamboo? Reality check needed here. The frame represents a very small fraction of the cost of a basic bicycle. Even if an average Ghanaian manages, with great effort, to cobble up a bike frame from bamboo, that bike is still going to need manufactured rims, spokes, hubs, chain, bottom bracket, cranks, pedal axles, front sprockets, rear gear cluster, derailleurs, seat post, seat, brakes, cables, levers and more.

For years I contemplated selling my car and riding a bicycle to work. I would ride to the Tustin train station four miles from my Irvine home on a bike path that would put me just half a mile from the station. From there I would take the Metrolink train to work in downtown Los Angeles. But the few times I tried riding my road bike, I was exhausted by the time I got home. Getting there was easy - all downhill - but coming home was sheer agony, grinding up hills after a long workday.

Over the years, there has been a growing concern about air pollution and automobiles. One of the suggestions to solve this problem has been the bicycle. I recently went for a leisure bike ride on 1st and 17th streets from Grand Avenue to Beach Boulevard. The streets were in poor condition and had no bike lane, making it very difficult to ride. I had three choices: Ride along the curb and risk injuring myself or my bike. Ride on the sidewalk (which is illegal). Ride away from the curb to avoid the damaged areas, but also risk entering the pathway of passing cars.

It's wonderful that Chelsey Thomas will have a "Reason to Smile" (Aug. 23) after surgeons finish a complicated surgery to correct the Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological condition that affects her facial nerves. What is disheartening is The Times' photo, which shows her about to ride her bicycle without a helmet while her 14-year-old brother uses in-line skates with no helmet or any protective pads! If the Thomases are willing to commit their HMO to a $70,000 surgery, why aren't they also willing to spend the minimal amount required for helmets and protective pads?

If it had an ounce of buoyancy, "Girl on a Bicycle" might qualify as a diverting piffle. But Jeremy Leven's attempt at old-school romantic comedy, set in a postcard-pretty tourist's vision of Paris, is more of a foolish plod than a weightless rollick. The Euro-pudding of a premise concerns Italian tour bus driver Paolo, his German flight attendant fiancée and the title character, a French model who catches his eye as she crisscrosses the city fetchingly on two wheels. The alleged hilarity grinds into gear when Paolo accidentally hits the bicyclist with his bus, then pretends to be her husband to visit her in the hospital.

Police said a 9-year-old boy who was riding his bicycle in a wooded area behind Martinez Junior High School on Saturday apparently was stabbed to death. A group of neighborhood boys discovered the body of Eric Coy and his bicycle in bushes beside a wooded footbridge that crosses a creek in an area known to be frequented by transients. Police declined to release any details of the homicide except to say that the murder weapon appeared to be a "sharp object."

It all seemed so innocent at first. Dan Gladney was just looking for a way to stay in shape. "I thought, 'Gee, this looks like a lot of fun,' " he recalled. "Buy a bike, a helmet, and you're set." If only things were so easy. Just a year after he spent $350 on a new bicycle ("I thought that was a lot of money at the time") Gladney recently "upgraded" to an aluminum bicycle in the $2,000 range. The weekly rides of the past have given way to daily outings at 5 a.m., and the 20-mile excursions that once seemed so challenging are now hardly enough to work up a sweat.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, on an evening bicycle ride, rescued a woman who was being threatened by a group of girls wielding a metal bar, the mayor's office said. Documentary filmmaker Franny Armstrong was confronted by the teenage girls, who pushed her against a car Monday night as she was walking in North London, news reports said. She said she saw Johnson on his bicycle and shouted to him. Johnson picked up the metal bar, which was more than a yard long, and cycled after the girls, Armstrong said.

Quincy and Monica Jeffries had never seen Wilshire Boulevard so quiet. They smiled up at the blue-green facade of the Wiltern theater. "You just drive by, and you don't recognize all the beautiful buildings," Monica Jeffries, 40, said. The couple had traveled from Santa Clarita to participate in CicLAvia, which offered a rare opportunity to enjoy a car-free 6.3-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, from downtown to the Miracle Mile area. The Jeffrieses rode Trikkes -- three-wheeled, scooter-like vehicles with no motors or pedals.